mastodon
patreon
Where we're at
🕑 Added 2023-01-07 08:28:08 +0000 UTCHello all, it's been a long time since I wrote an update on Patreon, and there are quite a few things to catch up on. November last year turned out to be a very turbulent time with the amount of active users on Mastodon jumping from about 300K to 2.5M and with them also the pressure on the project from pretty much every angle that still hasn't subsided.
Our repository was overwhelmed with new contributions, bug reports, and feature requests; mastodon.social and mastodon.online overwhelmed with demand, not just from a technical perspective of needing to scale up the infrastructure to handle new traffic, but also from a customer support and moderation perspective; e-mail overwhelmed with press inquiries, suggestions, offers, job applications, server submissions; not to mention the overlap with the Mastodon 4.0 release which on its own requires a lot of focus and attention.
Very fortunately, our support on Patreon grew as well, from previously about $7K USD per month to (as of writing) $31K USD per month, which not only covers the increased operating costs, but also opens up new opportunities for our non-profit organization to grow, which I am extremely grateful for. Mastodon has been a very small operation for a very long time, it started and continued up to now as a solo venture with a moderately growing number of contractors; both the new challenges and the increased support mean that it's time to take it a step further.
Here is what's been happening and what's coming soon.
In November, Mastodon 4.0 came out with post editing, hashtag following, post translations, customizable user roles and many other features.
We plan to release the 2022 Annual Report this month. I believe it might be a bit more interesting than last year's.
We've been laying the groundwork for being able to employ more people and are planning to announce job openings for the first key roles soon.
Our trademark is already registered in the EU, and is now in the process of registration in other countries, most notably the US.
With increased attention on Mastodon, the name that identifies us and our community becomes a more interesting target for misuse by bad actors.
Due to the lack of legal counseling early on, information on the usage of our trademark has always been sparse. We now have a Trademark Policy.
To provide more transparency on what we're working on and what we're planning to do, there is now a public roadmap on our website.
With two new iOS developers on board, the development of the official Mastodon app for iOS has picked up steam. We have a lot planned for both our mobile apps.
We're designing new merch items and talking to a manufacturer/distributor with high-quality, responsibly-sourced products.
Comments
Jack Lowe
Thank you for everything from this refugee of The Great Twitter Migration of 2022. Keep up the good work!
Patrick
Thank you for everthing! You're the only Patreon I support and I can't wait to see my name on the home page! I only wish I could support more.
Justin Jackson
I upped my monthly pledge after reading this. Excited to be supporting your work here! 🙌
Froilan Irizarry
Thank you and your team for all your incredible effort and the thoughtful update. Also, congratulations for all you’ve accomplished. Very excited to see what’s next.
Christina O'Connell
Thanks for roadmap and thoughtful approach.
Michael Hannemann
Yep, I have done that as well!
Stephen Petrey
Exciting times ahead!
Rob Alfieri
Thank you and the team for all the hard work and for giving us Twitter refugees a great place to land. 🙏🖖
Andrew Rich
Thanks for the news and updates. Looking forward to details about the merch!
Tim Johnsen
Saw that a URL scheme was added to the iOS app, exciting! I’ll be integrating it with Opener soon.
robo
Major congrats! Hoping y’all are able to breathe soon and prevent burnout. Really excited that your financial support has grown along with the demands. Happy to see nonprofit/open social media thrive with y’all’s steady direction.
Carlos Ariza
Very encouraging - congrats
Mircea Kitsune
Especially from a development standpoint, you're doing very well and I love the latest changes. Beyond that I can only hope that compared to a few years ago the team has become even more professional, detached, and less involved about users politics / worldviews: Remember one main goal is to revive and secure the old internet as it was meant to be, before political / societal conflict became a norm for odd reasons and everything / everyone in the world had to decide who's good or bad and take stances; Especially as FOSS developers we fight for everybody whether we like them or not (I apply this even to myself) to have support to speak share their ideas and express themselves freely. Despite my own hardships with the Mastodon team years ago, thank you for what you have created and done for the open internet of everyone... here's to another year of ending corporate control and state censorship of the world's internet!
GeneBean
Just wanted to say your work is greatly appreciated!
Lotto is a tax on people bad at math MAGA is a tax on people bad at reality
Well done. Just want to remind your Patrons if they CAN also donate to their instances.
Andy Piper
Great update, and thanks for sharing. Good news that you might be able to expand the team. Looking forward to following the progress.
Lucas Janin
Thanks for the update! It was a fantastic year! Happy to see the community growing. I can’t wait to see the next mastodon server. Thanks you and happy new year!
David Roessli
Great news! I join all of the above in thanking you for your unrelenting commitement and all the energy you have poured into this project. I am so grateful to be part of this project and this community. Take care.
Donna McTaggart
Wow. Well done. Thank you for all you are doing to provide a platform that is stable and so responsive to users. Much appreciated.
Elia Ayoub
Happy to be reading this update and I look forward to seeing Mastodon grow! I'll explore how to be more involved as well
Jens Comiotto-Mayer
I can't put it into better words than Rob Valentine here – acknowledge the monumental achievement you have accomplished, and take care for yourself. There will be (and most likely already is, you know much better…) critics, maybe sometimes even entitlement, all of which can be exhausting at times. Personally, I'm nothing but grateful. You gifted a new social home to me, and you are giving back power to us, the people. Thank you.
Dad
Thank you for all your hard work! Glad to hear that the resources are there to get some more help.
Gudrun
Well done you - and thank you!
Rob Valentine
This is genuinely a very encouraging update. We all know it’s been hard and the scaling up has been a tremendous strain on the team so thank you for taking the time. I hope you’re taking the time as well to acknowledge (even if only to yourself) what a monumental achievement this all is and are taking the time to look after yourself. As the team grows, I’d imagine the personal strain will be tempered a little as critical fixes and code changes are spread around a little. Thanks again and look forward to supporting for many, many years.
